A short 15 years after the last episode of Saved by the Bell aired, Zack Morris is back.
He may be older, not as cute, and missing some of his sidekick friends… but make no mistake, he’s back. And it’s hilarious. Don’t believe me? You’ll have to watch this:
(If you have issues viewing the video embedded in this post–I had trouble in Firefox–you can view it here.)
The huge cell phone KILLS me. Oh my lord.
If you loved Saved by the Bell as much as I used to (who am I kidding, I still watch it some mornings), I hope you found that as enjoyable as I did. Every character and episode that they referred to? Um, yeah. I knew exactly what they were talking about. Even the freakin’ Zack Attack song!
Funny related story: In high school, for an assignment in Spanish class, we had to pick a story, a movie, or an episode of a television show and a) condense the script into a 10 minute performance; b) translate that script into Spanish; and c) act in and produce a video of said performance. The project groups were made up of three people; I was in a group with two other girls, Krista and Kristen. A lot of the other groups chose fairy tales, and I think one may have done The Breakfast Club. But we wanted to do something we knew no one else was going to do. So we decided to act out a Saved by the Bell episode.
Can you guess which episode we chose? …
…
… Well, I wasn’t really going to make you guess, and was just going to finish this story right away, but hey… why not make you guess? Come on, Saved by the Bell fans… make me proud with your knowledge.
If I had a prize to give, I’d give one, but since I can’t think of anything, well, this is just for fun. But go ahead! Guess. Bonus points if you can guess which character(s) I played.
I’ll make the reveal tomorrow afternoon, so get your “entries” in ASAP!
Last week, I was brainstorming, trying to come up with something to make for my mother-in-law’s birthday. I was kicking around the idea of making something with lemons, but wasn’t sure exactly what to make. And then, wouldn’t you know it… this cake popped up in my Google Reader from Annie’s Eats. Annie to the rescue!
Selfishly, I omitted the raspberry filling and raspberries as garnish, because, well, raspberries make me gag. And they’re also pretty expensive around these parts. I figured I’d give the lemon and poppyseed cake, and the lemon buttercream frosting a try… without any raspberries.
This was a hit with the family, but especially with my mother-in-law, who loves lemon. I really like the cake, but I agree with Annie’s assessment… the frosting was a little much. Annie didn’t care for how sweet it was. For me, it was more about how lemony it was. A little too much for my tastes. But that didn’t stop me from eating a leftover piece tonight, now did it? Of course not.
Annie made hers into small cake rounds. I made my cake in two 9-inch pans to make a traditional layer cake (I decorated it nicely–with decent handwriting, too, I was proud!–but forgot to take pictures before we shoved 50 candles into it. Whoops). You can’t tell easily in the photo since the color of the frosting blends so well with the cake, but I added a thin layer of the frosting between the two layers.
Lemon Poppyseed Cake with Lemon Buttercream
(Source: Annie’s Eats, adapted from Notes From My Food Diary)
Ingredients:
For the cake:
– 2 1/3 cups cake flour
– 2 3/4 tsp. baking powder
– 1/4 tsp. salt
– 1 1/2 tbsp. poppy seeds
– 5 large egg whites, at room temperature
– 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
– 1 1/2 cups sugar
– 2 tbsp. finely grated lemon zest
– 12 tsbp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
– 1 cup whole milk (I substituted skim and didn’t notice any ill effects)
For the lemon buttercream frosting:
– 16 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
– 2 tbsp. finely grated lemon zest
– 3 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
– 3 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
Directions:
1. To make the cake, position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9×13″ cake pan.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and poppy seeds in a bowl; set aside.
3. In the clean, dry bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites on medium speed until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and increase the speed to medium-high. Beat just until stiff peaks form when the whisk is lifted. Transfer the egg whites to a separate bowl, clean the mixer bowl and reattach it with the paddle attachment.
4. Add the butter to the mixer bowl and beat on medium speed until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and beat until incorporated. Mix in the lemon zest. Beat the mixture on medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Add 1/4 cup of the milk and beat until just blended.
5. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture alternately with the remaining milk in three batches, beginning and ending with the flour, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Beat until just blended.
6. Using a rubber spatula, fold one quarter of the egg whites into the batter, being careful not to deflate the mixture. Once incorporated, add in the rest of the whites and gently fold in until well combined.
7. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 24-26 minutes. Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Run a thin knife around the outside of pan and gently turn the cake out. Allow to cool completely.
8. To make the frosting: In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and zest on medium speed until light and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar and beat until smooth. Add the lemon juice and beat for one minute longer.
9. Frost the cake with the lemon frosting.
Today, we hit up a local festival. I went in the morning with my brother, Kara, and baby Hunter (and a couple of their friends). It was Hunter’s first outing in the stroller.
The weather was so beautiful, so we all enjoyed walking around and getting some sun. We stopped for lunch at a local place that has great outdoor seating, and Michael met us there. We all indulged in a couple pitchers of a local brew, and just relaxed. Hunter slept pretty much the entire time we were out–like 5 hours! His mommy wishes he would do that at night. ;)
Can’t post about the baby without posting a new picture. Loved his little outfit. His shirt had a picture of a lion on it and it said, “I rule the kingdom.” No kidding, kid! He had on matching little brown shorts. I know everyone always says that girl stuff is cuter, but they have some damn cute things for boys these days, too.
I definitely got some sun today. I worsened my farmer’s tan (except my sleeves were a little shorter this time, so I guess it actually helped a little), and I even have flip flop tan lines now. Niiiice.
When we got home, we spent THREE HOURS cleaning our house from top to bottom. We’re having Michael’s family over tomorrow to celebrate his mom’s birthday. Quite the busy weekend so far, and tomorrow will be busy, too!
My friend, Lynsay, texted me earlier to say she is in the hospital, ready to give birth to her baby! They live in North Carolina, so unfortunately, I don’t get to snuggle another baby anytime soon. But it looks like their little guy (the name is a surprise) will be born tomorrow morning sometime. It’s so funny because her epidural is working so well that she spent an hour or two just texting back and forth with me. Not a bad labor, huh? Can’t wait to hear the news…
I’ve started to get a lot of questions related to my camera–in both the comments and my e-mail inbox. I’ll try to post stuff like this here, so that I only really have to answer it once (or, at the very least, I’ll have somewhere to point you all!).
OK, so let’s go over the basics.
I shoot with a Canon Digital Rebel XT. It looks like this:
We bought it in November 2006, and I shot for a few years with it primarily in “auto” mode. Around Christmas this past year, I decided I wanted to stretch my photographic legs a little bit and decided to start playing around and learning more about manual settings. I have not been back in automatic mode since then.
We bought the camera with the kit lens (EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6). It’s OK, but I don’t use it much anymore, unless I need to take wide angle shots that I can’t swing with my favorite lens.
The favorite lens? It’s the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II that we bought back in January. It looks like this:
And I love it. It allows you to open the aperture wide, so it’s good in low-light situations. It also gives you those narrow-depth-of-field shots that everyone always drools over. This lens doesn’t zoom; it’s one fixed focal length (50mm). Therefore, it’s not appropriate for every occasion, but generally, it is a nice all-purpose lens.
Also in January, I became extremely frustrated with the lighting for my indoor shots. It’s one of those things… my preference is always to shoot with natural light, but let’s face it: in the wintertime, natural light is hard to come by. I found that the built-in flash on my camera was not cutting it. So I invested in one of these:
It’s a Canon Speedlite 430 EX II. And it is SO MUCH BETTER. I still prefer to shoot with natural light, but when that’s impossible, this thing is my best friend. I almost never use it shooting straight forward, though. I always use it as a bounce flash, bouncing the light off of nearby walls, windows, or even the ceiling. Love it.
For those instances when we don’t want to lug around our camera bag, we have this pocket-sized point-and-shoot, the Canon Powershot SD1000. (Can you tell we are Canon people?) This is actually our second Canon point-and-shoot. We upgraded in December 2007 after having our first one for several years. It looks like this:
We have no complaints; it is a great little point-and-shoot, and we love that we can just throw it into my purse or into Michael’s pocket.
There is another fun camera accessory we invested in, just prior to our honeymoon: an underwater case. We bought one for the point-and-shoot, as I would never dream of taking our SLR underwater. We used it for all of our snorkeling adventures, and it was pretty awesome. Definitely a great purchase. It looks like this:
It makes the otherwise compact point-and-shoot kind of bulky, but it was so worth it. We followed all of the directions to a “T” every time that we used it, and we didn’t have any leaking or fogging problems. If you want to see some of our underwater pics and videos, check out the honeymoon tag over on Road to the Aisle. (Check out the Maui posts. We didn’t have much luck with snorkeling in Kauai.) We’re disappointed we’re not going to a beach location for our vacation this year since we won’t have an opportunity to use it! Note to self: Plan another vacation during which we can use our underwater camera case!
That’s basically it–the start of what I hope is a long relationship with camera equipment. It’s just too bad it’s all so expensive. I hope to upgrade my camera body in the not-too-distant future, and I would love love LOVE another lens or two. (I wish the lenses weren’t as expensive as the cameras!)
A couple of people have commented that I should share photography tips. I don’t know that I can do that yet. I’m still learning myself, I definitely don’t feel qualified to be teaching others! Maybe someday…
Hopefully that begins to answer some of your questions, though. If there’s anything else, let me know in the comments!
P.S. If you’re actually in the market for any of this stuff, shop around. I linked to Amazon just so you could all go read up on the specifics of the products if you so choose. But the prices? Yikes. We got much better deals on most of this stuff by purchasing elsewhere.
A few weeks ago, we started talking about letting Tessa off of her leash more often. She’s older now (3 years old), and tends to be a bit wiser. Also, all she ever wants to do is be with us. We’re not really afraid of her running off, since wherever we go, she tends to follow.
She has been off of her leash before, but only when we are in the mountains. We are afraid of her running into traffic, so we would never let her off if we were anywhere near a street. In the Poconos, that’s not really a problem as we’re always staying at a place that has lots of land. So that was always the only place that we really felt comfortable letting her off the leash.
Until now.
One night after dinner, we took her to a nearby school to walk around. The school is set back pretty far from any roads, and they have huge fields for sports. We figured, hey, we’ll let her off her leash and see what she does.
It turns out that she absolutely loves it. The minute I unclip her, it’s like she’s thinking, “I’m freeeeeeee!” But she’s also really good, just as we expected she’d be. Her biggest problem is that she gets easily distracted, sniffing around instead of listening to us. Also, if she sees birds, she’ll take off running after them. Luckily, she never goes far before turning around to come back to us, but this behavior reinforces the fact that we’ll never let her off anywhere that could pose any type of dangers to her.
Anyway, we’ve been running her at the school pretty regularly now. We run her up and down the fields, encouraging her to chase us back and forth. And let me tell you–little girl is FAST. She really tears it up, and it’s hilarious.
Last weekend, when we got home from visiting Michael’s sister, we took her to the school for a bit of running time before it got dark. I decided to bring my camera to capture some action shots of her play. I cropped them quite a bit, so they’re not the sharpest photos, but here are a couple of our favorites:
Look: She doesn’t even have any legs touching the ground. She’s running so fast, all four legs are in the air. And the ears? Straight up. So funny.
Here she is, once again barreling straight toward me. She runs as fast as she possibly can, then runs right in between my legs before slowing down and circling back to me for praise and a little rest. Love her.
We’re going to try to take her out this weekend and get some more pics, and perhaps some video. If we get anything good, I’m sure I won’t be able to resist sharing it.
Have I mentioned how much I love spring/summer? It is such a joy to be outside.
About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
